A Glass Darkly
by Seriana Ritani
Summary: Rose Tyler, struggling with little success to resume a normal life, has a chance encounter with someone she’s never met . . . someone she thought she’d never see again.
1. Chapter 1: The Key

A Glass Darkly

A Doctor Who Fanfiction by Seriana Ritani

In Sum: Rose Tyler, struggling with little success to resume a normal life, has a chance encounter with someone she's never met . . . someone she thought she'd never see again.

Rating: PG. Squeaky clean. Mostly.

For Malaïka, in memory of the _salle de Harry Potter,_ the_salle de Docteur Qui_, the days when Christian and Charlemagne needed to be shot, and most particularly the _TEDREE en pelluche_—the Fuzzy Tardis.

* * *

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 

1 Corinthians 13:12

* * *

Chapter 1

The Key

* * *

Not for the first time, Rose Tyler wakes up with the sense of faint disorientation that comes from sleeping in a strange bed.

Half asleep, she tries to work out just why that is. She's enshrouded in the soft warm comfort of her bed, but the blankets feel unnaturally smooth. The mattress is a touch too soft, curving deeply around her body. Something's missing from the scent of the air—a mix of old fur coats, motor oil, and static electricity, familiar enough to go unnoticed until it disappears. All she can smell is fresh air and lavender, pleasant but unexpected. And the soft hum of noise in her ears is not the reassuring pulse of the engine, but a rhythmless whine from far away, punctuated by high, sharp cheeps.

Birds. Those are birds. And the hum is the dirigibles over London, and the lavender smell is the soap the maids use to wash her sheets, and she's in her own bed in her own room in her father's house.

She remembers now. She forgets every night, and remembers every morning, that this fairy tale has become her life. It's a beautiful life—she has both her parents, she has a little sister whom she loves, she has a boyfriend who couldn't be more wonderful, she has money and fame and a big huge beautiful room all to herself—but there's always that moment every morning where her heart and lungs shudder to a halt, frozen in dismay.

She forces herself to breathe. Now that the first shock of it is over, the rest of the day won't be so bad.

She showers and dresses and goes downstairs, studiously ignoring the newspaper on the dining room table. The pictures on the front page start talking if you look at them too long. Just another headline gimmick, her dad says, but her mum about screamed her head off the first time the paper told her, in the Prime Minister's rather tinny voice, that the Exchange was at a record high. Jackie isn't used to surprises like that. Not like Rose is.

Her mum is in the nursery with baby Sarah, trying to get her into a rather awful pink onesie. "There you are, Sweetheart, all lovely and cozy, and if you get mashed peas on this one you'll be wearing nothing but mashed-pea-green until you're twelve. Right. Good morning, Rose love."

"Morning, Mum." Rose smiles, half a real smile for the joy of having a baby sister, half a clumsy, forced smile for her mother, who can't bear to see Rose fretting over the way things used to be Back Then. "Dad gone off to work already?"

"Yeah. Left at about seven. Always was the crack-of-dawn sort. Had your breakfast yet?"

"Yeah," Rose lies. "Just grabbed a quick bite. I'm going to get moving myself. I've only got about six billion tons of reports to read this morning."

"Well, have a good time, and stop back for lunch if you can tear yourself away from your desk. Dad's promised to come, and I can call Mickey and have him over, too."

"I'd like that. I'll try to be there."

"Go on then. And don't forget your driving permit. You always do when you leave it in the pocket of your green coat."

Rose picks up baby Sarah and snuggles her face into the warm, squishy, wriggling, powder-scented tummy. Sarah gets a handful of her big sister's hair and pulls enthusiastically. Rose gently untangles the pudgy hand and puts the baby back down on the carpet. "Bye-bye, Sarah Tyler. Love you, Mum."

Her green coat is hanging in the front closet. Rose never used to hang her coats up when she took them off, but she does now. It seems impolite a mess around this big, beautiful house. Despite the fact that it's _her_ house, she still feels like a guest. She fishes in the pocket for her permit and her credit card and keys. It's a big bunch of keys. There's one to the house, one for her car, one for her office at Torchwood, one for her filing cabinet, one for the closet where they keep all the silver, and one more that doesn't open anything in the whole universe.

That one's on its own ring, along with a key fob in the shape of a staff and serpent. It's the international symbol for health care. It means "doctor" in all those terrestrial languages that Rose doesn't speak anymore. She wanted to use the universal symbol of health care, a green crescent, but no one seems to make them and she didn't want to call attention to her precious memento by having a fob specially made.

She puts the keys in her pocket and goes to work.

* * *

"Miss Tyler, Mr. Cartwright from Intelligence is here to see you."

Rose looks up from the packet of papers she's reading, her mind swirling with bits and pieces of UFO sighting reports. Her secretary (she's always surprised that she has a secretary; "Rose Tyler's secretary" sounds so odd) is standing in the doorway of her ridiculous office. "Oh. Thanks, Elsie. You can let him come in."

Elsie withdraws. Just outside the door, Rose hears her say "Miss Tyler will see you now" to someone out of view.

_Miss Tyler will see you now,_ she repeats in her head. _Honestly. She's talks like I'm the ruddy queen._

Mr. Cartwright from Intelligence is ushered into the royal presence. He's a short, fidgety man, mostly bald, whose tie is cinched just a little too tightly around his neck. He's got a manila envelope under his right arm, which causes him some trouble when he tries to shake hands with her. The envelope's contents go flying across the carpet. Rose drops to her knees, grateful to have something physical to do, and helps him pick them up. "No, really, it's all right," she insists as he apologizes over and over.

"I'm so terribly sorry, Miss Tyler. I know how busy you must be, and—"

"I'm bored out of my mind, actually," says Rose. "And please call me 'Rose.' I've been trying to get Elsie to do it, but she always forgets. What's your first name?"

"Arthur," says Arthur, now blushing so fiercely Rose can feel the heat coming off his face.

"Arthur, then," Rose insists. "Arthur and Rose. I really can't be 'Miss Tyler' when I'm only twenty." She's actually probably nearly twenty-two now, but it was very hard to keep track of things like birthdays Back Then and she's lost count of her age. She picks up the last sheet of paper and helps Arthur up off the floor. "Now then, Arthur, what did you want to see me about?"

"Well, I've got some, um, some photographs. From our agents in Dublin. There's been, um, some vandalism incidents over the past two days and they wanted to know if they looked like anything you might recognize."

"Well, sit down and let's have a look." She speaks with more confidence than she feels. This is what Torchwood pays her to do: to seek out things that she recognizes from her travels. It's not half stressful. She knows a lot about the universe, much more than anyone on this Earth does, but there're still vast amounts that she doesn't know. She only traveled for a little while, after all. And all of Time and Space is a lot of material to memorize.

She pulls the photographs out of the envelopes and leafs through them. The first few are rather useless-looking pictures of crowded Dublin streets. There are dozens of people hurrying about their business; the back half of a bus takes up the better part of one frame. In the background of each picture is a red brick wall.

The next picture is of the wall itself. Hundreds of marks are scribbled on it in something white, either paint or chalk. They're in long columns, running from about ten feet above the ground all the way down to the sidewalk.

Rose leafs quickly through the other pictures. There are different walls, with different arrangements of marks, but they all have the same look to them, and it's a look that she knows.

She reaches into her pocket and discreetly wraps her hand around the fob on her keys.

_It's the Tomarabez alphabet_, she remembers him saying. In her memory, he brushes back his overcoat to stick his hands in the pockets of his pin-striped trousers, rocking back on the heels of his white trainers_. Used all over this galaxy. A good alphabet's a valuable thing. Once you've got one, everyone wants to use it. And so many things are so much easier when everybody's using the same one one. Keyboards and stencils and sounding things out and all that. Unless, of course, you're speaking English and the spelling makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. You English put a perfectly good Roman alphabet completely to waste. I mean, E-N-O-U-G-H? What drunken medieval Scrabble player thought of that one?_

A smile tugs at one corner of her mouth, her body going warm with the memory of being happy. And then the wash of sadness comes, twisting her mouth back down. So she neither smiles nor cries: she just sighs a little at the thought of her mother, who's so eager that she should forget about everything she's lost. It's hard to do when all you do at work is try to remember.

"Well," she says to Arthur, "I do recognize it. It's the Tombaranez alphabet, so it's definitely alien. But it's used to write hundreds of languages all over the place, so I've got no idea which aliens might have done it or what it says. It could just be a sort of 'Kilroy Was Here' thing."

"M-hm." Arthur doesn't seem to share her optimism. Rose gets that a lot. No one else at Torchwood has had the benefit of spending time in the company of a pleasant, cheerful, compassionate alien. "Well, thank you, Miss . . . Rose. I'm sure that—"

"Hold on a minute." Rose has flipped through the remaining papers to a map of Dublin. Each vandalism site is marked on it with a black dot. "It looks like they're in an arrangement. Look, I can almost draw a crescent. We're just missing a couple of points up here."

Arthur nods uncertainly.

"Are you going to send out an agent to investigate this?"

"Well, it's the Dublin office's business, really, and as it's only chalk they're not much concerned about it. They might send someone. I don't know."

She frowns a little at the map. "I might just hop out there and have a look. Just for curiosity's sake."

Arthur nods a little again, though he looks as though he's dreading she'll ask him along. "If you want, I can try to get the request for expenses through the Intelligence department. You're not a regular agent, but you _are_ Rose Tyler, so—"

"So I can use my dad's aeroplane," Rose finishes for him. "It's not a big secret mission. It's just a day trip, to see if I can find some aliens and swap the latest gossip with them. Maybe learn how to spell in the Tombarenez alphabet." She stands up, and Arthur does likewise. "Thanks for the photographs, Arthur. It was nice talking to you."

* * *

"There you are, Sweetheart. I was just about to call your office."

"I'm fine, Mum," Rose insists, stripping off her jacket and hanging it neatly in the hall closet. "Mickey and Dad here yet?"

Jackie, a smudge of mustard on her nose from the enthusiastic preparation of sandwiches, jerks her head towards the back of the house. "They're out on the patio. You can go on, and I'll bring the lunch things."

"Sure you don't need any help?"

"No, I can manage. Go on and put your feet up."

_Go on and talk to Mickey,_ you mean, Rose thinks, but she doesn't say it. She knows how her mother feels about Mickey. To Jackie, a stable relationship between Mickey and Rose would mean that Back Then is finally gone forever.

Rose goes outside to talk to Mickey, though not because her mother wants her to.

"Hallo, Rosie," says her dad, reaching a hand up to squeeze her elbow as she approaches his chair. Rose bends down and kisses the top of his balding head. She's been braced for some cruel twist to this dream-come-true of having a father, but the cruel twist has never come. Pete Tyler has been waiting as long and as hopelessly to be a dad as Rose has been waiting to be Daddy's Little Girl. It's perfect. Her whole life is perfect beyond imagining. Except that there's a dirigible fleet over London and the newspapers talk, but these are easily overlooked. And that she misses Back Then, but there's not much point in mentioning that anymore.

Mickey jumps up the second he sees her. His smile for her, and hers for him, are genuine in a way that nothing else in this universe really is.

"Hey, Rose," says Mickey.

"Hey, Mickey," says Rose.

Her smile says _Thank God for you, Mickey Smith. I'd go mad here without you._

Mickey's smile says_ I love you._

"Who wants sandwiches?" says Jackie.

* * *

Mickey and Rose are sitting on the dock of Pete Tyler's private man-made lake, both barefoot with their toes in the water. Pete and Jackie are still on the patio, well out of earshot. Mickey is working on his third sandwich. Rose is picking at the remaining three-quarters of her first one.

"Dublin, then?" says Mickey. "When're you leaving?"

"This afternoon, I guess. I haven't anything else to do, really. Want to come along?"

Mickey snorts, which is hard to do with his mouth full of sandwich, and swallows. "Nah. Got another round of community service stuff to do."

Rose grins. Law-abiding, ever-timid Mickey, Mickey who wielded machine guns against the Cybermen, who saved the world with guts and brains that no one (including Mickey himself) knew he had, is spending his days doing community service to atone for the traffic violations of his alternate-reality counterpart. She has such a hard time understanding Mickey sometimes, but she's always so desperately glad he's there. He's been her bridge: a familiar face from her old world, a confident guide to the new. He loves this place, and his excitement brings her out of her despondency. Mickey always did make her happy.

"But you'll call when you land?" he asks, brushing crumbs off his mouth. Worrywart Mickey.

"Course I will. It's just a stroll around the block, really. I'll be back by bedtime."

"That private jet's going to your head," says Mickey. "A stroll around the block gets you from the front door to the back door of your house. Dublin is a strange and far-away city where they all talk funny."

"A stroll around the block," says Rose before she thinks about it, "used to be Alpha Centauri."

Mickey's smile fades a little, from a half-laugh to a slow, bittersweet curve. Rose is immediately sorry she said anything, but at the same time she's glad she said it to Mickey and not to her mum.

"The good old days," he says.

Rose flings a few droplets out of the lake with her toes, watching them dance and glitter in the sunlight before crashing back into the shining whole._Just like moments we pull out of Time to examine more closely. _

"Listen, Rose," says Mickey, his smile now entirely gone. "Tomorrow, after you're back from Dublin, you want to go out? Just to talk, you know."

Rose smiles, pulling her foot from the lake to let it dry on the warm boards of the dock. "Just to talk about how Mum won't let you alone until you get me to marry you?"

Mickey grins uncomfortably. "That was pretty high on the list of topics, yeah."

Rose rolls her eyes. "Mum."

"But do you want to?" asks Mickey.

"Do I want to go out tomorrow, or do I want to marry you?"

"Both," says Mickey. There's a steadiness in his voice and manner that would certainly not have been there if he'd asked her either question a year ago.

Rose looks him over, glad of him, the simultaneous strangeness and ordinariness of him.

"Yes, I want to go out," she decides. "Tomorrow. And yes, I want to marry you. But not yet." She turns her eyes to the sunlight cavorting on the lake, a million shining points that exist for an instant and are gone. "Not yet."

* * *


	2. Chapter 2: The Tardis

Chapter 2

The Tardis

* * *

It's quarter to nine in the morning in downtown Dublin, Ireland. The streets are crowded with people in a hurry. Cars mutter and honk as the traffic swirls by. Men in suits pass in clusters of two or three, talking in loud voices of things they're sure no one else in the street understands. Students bent under heavy backpacks scramble towards their various schools. A street vendor hawks magazines, candy bars, and the morning news loaded into earpieces, none of which have transmitters or receivers anymore. A holographic advertisement for a new sports drink flickers in the air a few blocks away. It's a relatively normal, quiet morning here, except for the young woman from another reality scuffing her shoes against the pavement.

She studied the vandalism pattern in the plane on the way over, and she's got a rough idea that she should be about here at about now if she wants to intercept the next set of markings. It's all a very rough estimate, of course. Rose was never terribly good at maths. But, in her defense, she never gets the digits mixed up, which she's known some geniuses to do on a fairly regular basis.

There's a brick wall across the street. She figure's it's about her best bet.

While she waits for something interesting to happen, she thinks about when she's going to feel like marrying Mickey. Probably not soon, unfortunately for everyone concerned. But she now feels fairly sure that it will happen. Mickey has changed, and she is changing. It's all rather scary, in a way. The Rose Tyler that saw the end of the world is fading, and the world she inhabited is fading with her.

She doesn't want to leave any of it behind. But neither does she want to spend any more of her precious time huddled against the white wall at Torchwood, sobbing and clawing at its unrelenting solidity. That hurt too much. She doesn't want to hurt anymore. And her human life is so very, very short.

White letters begin to ooze out of the brick wall.

Rose is the first one to notice. Then the bright white forms begin to catch the attention of other passers-by. One man waves his hand in front of the writing, to disrupt the beam of light that he must think is making the image. This has no effect on the oozing chalk marks.

The letters start towards the top right corner of the wall and proceed down in columns, working their way left. Rose tries to approach them, but the sudden crowd of motionless onlookers makes this difficult. Everyone on the sidewalk has stopped moving. Traffic is standing still. A driver climbs out of his bus to see what all the trouble's about. A young man on a bicycle catches his front wheel in the gutter and goes sprawling on the pavement. A girl with a ridiculously large purse under her arm helps him to stand up. A backpack-encumbered student produces a camera and starts snapping pictures. And in the midst of it all, the letters keep coming.

Rose puts her shoulder to the narrow gap between the two men in front of her and shoves. One of the men stumbles, and Rose puts her long-languishing gymnastics skills to use as she leaps through the gap and shoves forward again to create a new one.

After a few moments of pushing and dodging, she manages to make it to the front of the group. The letters are still coming, but there's not much room left now. She touches a few of the newest letters and feels the soft, powdery chalk cling to her fingertips.

"Hello?" she says, on the off chance that something or someone besides the gawking crowd might respond. "Is anyone here? My name's Rose, and I'd like to read what you wrote, but I can't. I don't know the Tombaranez alphabet." She's hoping that the use of the alien word will win her some points with anything that might be listening, but she hopes in vain. The letters terminate with a little coiling symbol that Rose recognizes as end punctuation. Nothing else of note happens.

She makes a little frustrated snorting noise and stuffs her hands vengefully into her pockets.

Then she yanks her left hand back out again with a cry of surprise, because something in there is _hot_.

It's not burning-hot, just surprising-hot. After a second, Rose slips her hand into the pocket again and fishes out the hot thing. It's her key. Not any of the normal keys—those are only as warm as they should be after riding around in her pocket all morning. The key, her key, the Back Then key, is hot.

"You're hot," she says to the key, staring at it in the hope that it might explain itself.

She's known the key to heat up like this. It echoes the warmth of the Heart where it was forged, and heats up whenever it's near that which it unlocks. Rose had once commented that this habit would be useful, like the little remote control to make your car honk for you, if the Tardis hadn't made such a feature unnecessary by being so glaringly visible to begin with.

This key is only hot when it is near the Tardis.

Rose knows this for absolute fact. She is so sure of it that she overlooks a lot of other absolute facts, like the absolute fact that when last she saw the Tardis it was in another universe and thus could not possibly anywhere near where she is now. If the key is hot, the Tardis is here, despite all evidence to the contrary. In the rush of joy and adrenalin, questions are swept away. The Tardis is here.

Where?

The hot key clutched tightly in her hand, Rose stands on tiptoe to see above the milling crowd. There is a peculiar dearth of blue wooden boxes as far as she can see in every direction.

She turns and fights her way out of the crowd, the chalk marks already a dim and unimportant memory. The Tardis has to be tucked around a back corner somewhere, in an alley or up a side street. She'll find it within minutes.

But there is nothing there. And the farther she ventures from the site of the chalk markings, the colder the key grows.

Hesitantly, movement returns to the street around her. The appearance of the chalk marks was fairly spectacular, but the writing isn't doing anything else and people do have to get to their jobs on time. As the traffic restarts itself, Rose weaves through the crowds and cars, checking every space large enough to hide a telephone box. There's simply nothing.

The key warms again as she trudges back to the brick wall, her sudden flush of oblivious happiness giving way to confusion and doubt. What in the world is happening?

She leans against the side of the parked bus and studies the key. It looks utterly ordinary, as always, though it feels as if it has spent hours under a hot summer sun.

"What are you telling me?" she murmurs to it, brushing aside her momentary concern that she might actually be talking to a key. She looks up at the writing again. She still doesn't know what it says.

"Is it the letters?" she asks the key, for lack of anyone better to talk to. "They're not the Tardis. Are they from _him_?" But if they are, she asks herself without bothering to consult the key, why doesn't he write in English so she can read it? Why, for that matter, doesn't he just shout her name so she can just go running to him?

She takes a step toward the brick wall, the key pinched between her thumb and index finger.

It begins to cool off.

She takes another step, and it's cooler still.

Rose turns around one hundred and eighty degrees and takes a long, hard look straight ahead.

There's nothing there but the bus. Just a parked bus, like every other bus in Dublin. But it's still parked there, even though the traffic is now moving freely around it. And the windows are heavily tinted, leaving the interior invisible. And in the middle of its folding door is something that certainly shouldn't be there: a Yarrow keyhole.

She feels her mouth fall open a little, and involuntarily the words tumble out. "_That's_ the Tardis!"

And before she quite knows what she is doing, she shoves the key into the lock and feels it turn. She has a vague sense that her heart has lodged itself somewhere near the nape of her neck and is banging energetically on each eardrum. Her hands are shaking. That's all right; she's opened this lock dozens of times with her hands shaking so hard she could barely hold the key.

The door folds open, and the dim, warm light of the Tardis engine greets her like an old friend. She steps inside and closes the door behind her.

Nothing has changed. The great glowing column in the center of the room is still gently pulsing with the energy of the mysterious Heart. The control panels around it are still the same, covered in knobs, dials, buttons, levers, pumps, and screens, all unlabeled. The support struts reach for the ceiling in soft, organic curves, like tropical trees. The only thing that's missing is her jacket tossed casually over the rails that lead from the column to the door.

"Hello, Old Girl," Rose says to the Tardis. She's smiling so wide that she's astonished her face can contain it. "Oh! You're just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!"

She feels a sudden urge to hug the engine core. She settles instead for walking up to rest the palms of both hands on a control panel. The metal seems to pulse a little in rhythm with the light and sound: the living heart of a living ship.

"Your chameleon circuit's all fixed," she tells the engine. "I would've walked right past you if it hadn't been for the key. No more silly blue box, then? Bit of a shame, really. He was so awfully proud of that ridiculous thing. Wouldn't have traded it for the world."

She unbuttons her jacket and hangs it in its customary place on the railing behind her.

"Which means, I guess," she continues, feeling her enormous smile fade along with her giddy excitement, "that you're not my Tardis. Because my Doctor would never have fixed that circuit. You're this universe's Tardis. And if he brought you here, then he's this universe's Doctor. And I've never seen either of you before in my life." She pauses and considers this fully. "Oh, God. This is going to be awful, isn't it?"

The Tardis pulses unhelpfully in response.

"Is he in here?" she asks. "No. No, he isn't. I saw him get off the bus. I thought he was the driver." She hasn't the slightest inkling of what the driver looked like, but she's quite sure she saw him, as an unremarkable person descending from an unremarkable bus. "So what's he doing here? Where's that dratted surveillance stuff?"

Rose circles the engine, looking for the rather badly connected screen that offers information on the environment outside the Tardis doors. It's a bit further to the right than it is in her universe, but it doesn't hang so lopsidedly off its control panel. All the buttons and knobs are just the same as they were, and Rose smiles as she finds that she remembers how to turn the screen on and make it work.

"Show me the Doctor," she mutters to it as she manipulates the familiar controls. "Show me where he is. Come on."

Then the door bangs merrily open.

Rose jumps away from the engine, her hands reflexively held up in plain sight, and stares unabashedly at the man who has stopped dead in the doorway. He doesn't look like anyone she's ever seen before. He's tall and lanky, with a rather pointed but generally good-looking face, and his long ginger hair is gathered into a ponytail behind his head. He's wearing a blue collared shirt and black slacks, topped off by an absurd patchworked leather jacket that looks as though it was constructed from brown, red, and orange dragon scales. His right hand is stuffing his key back into his pocket even though he doesn't appear to notice that it's moving.

But as unfamiliar as this man is, the look of saucer-eyed astonishment he bestows upon her can be no one but the Doctor—the Doctor confronted with a universe not behaving the way he expects it to behave. It's really a rather absurd expression, but it's so wonderfully familiar that Rose feels happiness boil up inside her like water in a kettle.

"Well, who in the_world_ are you?" demands the Doctor. "And how in the world did you get in here?"

Although there are half a dozen perfectly reasonable and coherent responses to these questions, all Rose can manage to say is, "You've got ginger hair!"

The look on his face that _this _comment brings forces her to burst into unrestrained laughter.

* * *

Several minutes pass before the Doctor manages to coax a coherent sentence out of Rose. She has to sit down on the edge of the engine platform and take deep breaths for rather a long time. The Doctor sits next to her and pats her comfortingly on the back, probably in hopes that she won't go from giggles to hiccoughs. Hiccoughs would render conversation all but impossible for the foreseeable future.

"All right, then," he says when Rose is able to breathe in and out five times without making any peculiar squeaking noises. "Have we met, are we going to meet, or are we meeting now?"

The way he asks this question, with perfect seriousness, allowing all three of these options to be viable possibilities, makes Rose want to crack again. But she maintains her composure and manages something resembling a sane reply. "A bit of all three, really. I mean . . . I've never met you before in my life! Isn't that ridiculous?"

"Hysterical," the Doctor agrees.

"What I mean is . . ." Rose struggles, "I know you better than I know anyone else in the world. Well, not _you_ you, but _my_ you . . . and we went everywhere together. Well, not _everywhere_, I mean, from my point of view now it's really nowhere, nowhere in the whole universe, but all the same . . . none of this is coming out making any sense at all, is it?"

"Not in the slightest," says the Doctor patiently.

"I'll start over." Rose takes a deep breath and extends to him her right hand. "Hi. I'm Rose Tyler."

"Enchanted, Rose Tyler," says the Doctor, shaking the extended hand. "Bewildered, but enchanted nonetheless. I'm the Doctor."

"Yes," says Rose, smiling so wide she feels her jaw might fall off. "Yes, you are."

* * *


	3. Chapter 3: The Doctor

Chapter 3

The Doctor

* * *

"So let me sum up, to be sure I've got this absolutely right," says the Doctor about half an hour later. He's now lounging back on one elbow, and he's been listening attentively to Rose struggle for coherence. "You're from another universe. A universe to and from which people have been bouncing like ping pong balls, but which is now absolutely inaccessible."

"Right," says Rose, pleased she's managed to make this part clear.

"Did you have a name for it?"

"A name for what?"

"The universe. Was it Universe 2, or Universe B . . . or Universe A, I suppose (forgive me for being a little egocentric) . . . or do they give universes human names, like hurricanes? Universe Charlie?"

Rose giggles. "We just called it 'the Universe.' We didn't think there was more than just the one when we named it."

"Right. Well, languages having to change with the times, we'll call yours 'Universe Charlie' and mine 'Universe Albert.' So to continue. In Universe Charlie, there is a Doctor. Like me."

"Shorter," Rose offers. "And not ginger. He was so disappointed the last time he regenerated . . ." She smiles and looks at her feet, remembering all too vividly how peculiar he'd looked to her, standing there in her mother's boyfriend's dressing gown and demanding to know the color of his hair.

The Doctor, the one sitting in the Tardis with her, catches the expression. She's staring into the middle distance, lost in her memory, one corner of her mouth curving up with happiness and the other starting to tense with grief.

"And this Doctor," he continues. "You were his Companion."

"Yes." Rose looks up, returning her focus to the conversation at hand. "Yes, I was. The Doctor's Companion."

"A human Companion," the Doctor muses. "Good grief, that other me must be a glutton for punishment. To take a Companion from a race that only lives, what, a hundred years? Hundred and ten?"

"Less, in my world. Maybe eighty. But I don't think he can help himself. He's been so lonely since the Time War. You did have a Time War, didn't you?"

Rose recognizes the shadow of pain that falls across his face. "Yes. We had a Time War. Eliminated the Daleks from the whole of creation and brought the Empire of the Time Lords crashing down around our ears. From millions of us down to fifteen—"

"Fifteen?" Rose repeats. Then she sits bolt upright and practically shrieks it. "FIFTEEN? Fifteen Time Lords?"

The Doctor nods, his expression grave. "Only fifteen."

"Why, you spoiled, ungrateful little prat!" Rose isn't sure whether to hug him or slap him. "Fifteen Time Lords and you're moping like it's the end of the world! Fifteen Time Lords! Are you mad? That's fifteen times as many Time Lords as we've got!"

"You're having me on," says the Doctor.

"I'm not," says Rose. "He's the only one. You're the only one."

"Just me, in the whole of space and time." Rose can almost see the idea flitting about in his head as he tries to grasp the concept of a universe empty of all Time Lords except himself.

"And your Companion," Rose reminds him.

"Who's sitting here in Tardis Albert," the Doctor reminds right back.

Rose shrugs. "I'm not the only Companion. Like you said, we only live eighty years or so, and for a lot of that time we're either too young or too old to travel. I'm sure he's found someone to keep him company by now. I mean, I hope he has. He needs someone to talk to. He gets so awfully broody when he's left by himself."

Unintentionally, she catches her lower lip in her teeth, picturing her Doctor sitting in an empty Tardis still strewn with her socks, staring into the empty air with that look of despair that twisted her insides so horribly. Then she imagines him smiling and active, urging the Tardis to fly ever faster, jabbering animatedly about time travel to . . . _someone_. Someone else. She's not sure that doesn't make her feel worse.

"Do I get _broody_?" inquires the Doctor of the universe in general. "I suppose I do, rather, sometimes. Thank goodness there's no one there to see it. I should like to meet this Doctor of yours. Seems like we'd have a lot to talk about."

"You'd get on like a house on fire," says Rose, now smiling again. It's far too strange for her to handle: missing the Doctor while the Doctor is sitting right next to her. "He'd be over the moon to see you—another Time Lord. Say, speaking of other Time Lords, where are they? I mean, you're not traveling by yourself, _still_, with so many others."

"Well, yes. I mean, we only have seven Tardis, so there's always going to be an odd man out, and this round it was my turn to go it solo. But we're all meeting up soon, and—"

"Hold it! Hold on!" Rose waits until his rapid-fire chatter cuts off, then demands, "Seven Tardises?"

"Why? How many have you got?"

"Just the one."

"Just the one again? But what about the hatcheries?"

"Since I've never heard of a Tardis Hatchery, I'm going to have to guess that they're gone, too. What's the plural of Tardis? Tardises? Tardii?"

"Tardis. One sheep, many sheep, one deer, many deer, one Tardis, many Tardis. Well, seven Tardis. The plural's in the 'd'. Anyway, we, with our seven Tardis and our fifteen Time Lord, are meeting up to switch the teams. So I won't be alone for too awfully much longer."

Rose shakes her hair out of her face. The gesture feels familiar and yet brand-new, like putting on a once-favorite shirt that's been lying forgotten in the back of the drawer. "So you're all meeting up here?"

"M-hm."

"Here in Dublin?"

"Well, why not? Nice city, Dublin. With just enough vandalism for us to be able to leave notes for each other without anybody noticing too much."

Rose gestured towards the door. "So the chalk marks outside? Those are _yours_?"

"Yes. Well, _ours_, not _mine_. One of the younger ones who doesn't quite know how to be discreet yet. They're really too young to even be off-planet, but as we haven't got a planet anymore . . ." He trails off into melancholy for a moment, then snaps back out of it so abruptly that Rose jumps. "So they're mastering time by trial and error, which, unfortunately, sometimes leads to things like notes in strange languages magically appearing on brick walls in the middle of rush hour. Ridiculous little whippersnickers."

"Can I meet them?" asks Rose. "They're all coming here, right?"

"You? Meet the Time Lords?"

The Doctor sits up a little and gives her a long, hard look from head to toe, as though trying to decide whether she's dressed for such an occasion. Rose blushes, suddenly self-conscious about her one heart, and limited brain, and eighty-year lifespan.

"Yeah, why not?" he decides at last. "I do have a reputation to maintain for being completely mad." He jumps to his feet and pulls her to hers; if she weren't so used to it, she would go sprawling on the metal-grating floor.

"What, they think you're completely mad, too?" asks Rose, grabbing her jacket from the railing.

"Why, do you?"

Without waiting for an answer, he pulls her across the room and through the door, out into the bright sunlight of morning in Dublin. He pauses to pull the door shut behind him, then stops and looks at her again. "So to come back to my original question, how did you get in there in the first place?"

Rose holds up her keys and jingles them. "Used my key."

"Knew I should've had the locks changed last time I regenerated." He takes the key in his hand and examines it, not overlooking the staff-and-serpent key fob. "That's my key, all right."

Then, in a movement so quick Rose barely sees it, the key is off the ring and the Doctor is stuffing his hand into his pocket.

"No!" she shrieks, grabbing for it. "Doctor, please! Give it back!"

"I can't have Tardis keys floating around all over the planet. _Anybody_ could wander in. Steady on!" He has to grab both Rose's wrists and twist them away from his pocket.

"But it's _my_ key. The Doctor gave it to me. It's all I have of him. I'll never use it again if you don't want me to, just please, please give it back."

Slowly, the Doctor lets her go. "You know a Tardis key's a valuable thing. Owning it could put you in danger."

"I know that. But it's my key. I'll keep it safe."

He takes out the key and shows it to her. "Your word?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

He sets the warm strip of metal in her palm. With a sigh of relief, she fixes it back on its ring and tucks the whole bunch into her pocket.

"All right, then." The Doctor flashes her a brief, apologetic smile.

"So, um . . . where are we meeting them? And when?"

The Doctor points to the brick wall behind her.

Rose turns, and with a smile realizes that the meaningless letters spell plain, ordinary English words. She's missed this aspect of life in the Tardis.

_Rendezvous is set for People's Gardens, Phoenix Park, 17 May 2005, noon-thirty, 436578 UPG. H, if you bring that miserable excuse for a pet, I will wring your and its miserable necks. V._

Below this, in another script, is written _You're just jealous. H._

"Who are they?" asks Rose, reaching out again to touch the marks.

"Oh, I couldn't possibly tell you that. Not now. Ruin the suspense. Besides, it's already—" he grabs her wrist and checks the time on her watch—"quarter past eleven, and we've got lots to do. Come on."

And before Rose can ask anything further, she is following the Doctor through what seems like half the supermarkets in Dublin, buying enough food to feed fifty people. She barely has time to notice that she's the one paying for everything, but even if she had more time, she wouldn't have cared. It's less trouble than cracking open a cash point or spinning the shop clerks a long and involved story that relies heavily on psychic paper. And she's never known what to do with her absurd allowance anyway.

At thirty-five minutes past noon, she and the Doctor are settled on the grass in Phoenix Park, unpacking grocery bags. They have enough for about a dozen different kinds of sandwiches, accompanied by pickles, coleslaw, crisps, biscuits, and tea. For the first time in an age, Rose is hungry. Without waiting for an invitation, she breaks open a paper parcel filled with slices of roast beef and starts work on the most delicious-looking sandwich she's ever seen. The Doctor watches her, smiling a little, curiosity dancing in his eyes.

"Shouldn't they be here?" asks Rose, checking her watch again.

"Oh, they'll be here," the Doctor assures her. "We just have to wait for the tea to cool off. Time Lords can be a little competitive about when we show up."

He unscrews the top from the thermos and holds his hand in the steam. "Any second now . . ."

"Tea drinkable yet?"

Rose looks up. Approaching them across the lawn are two people. One is a man who appears to be in his mid-thirties, his sandy hair beginning to thin. The other is a girl barely out of adolescence wearing a U2 t-shirt and a ridiculously short skirt over magenta-checked stockings.

"Too soon," the Doctor informs them. "Sorry."

The man says a word that is apparently so shocking the Tardis won't translate it.

"I _told_ you we should have waited," says the girl. She runs the last few steps to the picnic site, ignoring Rose entirely, and kisses the Doctor on the forehead. "Can I have a sandwich?"

"No," says the Doctor, but she ignores him as easily as she ignored Rose. She drops to her knees in the grass and reaches for one of the loaves of bread.

"Always jumping the gun," says a new voice, sounding both disapproving and amused. Rose pivots to get a look at the newcomers. The speaker is an older woman wearing a business suit, accompanied by a girl about Rose's age whose hair is done up in short blue spikes. "And Doctor, what on Earth is _that_?"

"Tea?" tries the Doctor, offering the thermos. When the other Time Lord levels him a 'that's-not-funny' look, he tries again. "Oh, _this_? Human. Rose Tyler. Rose Tyler, this is the Visionary."

"Hi," says Rose. She hurriedly brushes crumbs off her mouth before trying to smile.

"And her Companion, the Guide," the Doctor continues, indicating the girl with the spiked hair. "The Hunter you see there trying to figure out how I cheated on the tea . . . which I did not do . . . approaching from behind the begonias are the Orator, the Analyst, the Ambassador, and the Student, and this greedy little pig . . ." he reaches across the spread to snatch the packet of chocolate biscuits away from the girl . . . "is the Dancer."

"Hi," says the Dancer cheerfully. She waves with one hand and tries to grab the biscuits back with the other.

The Guide strips off her biker's jacket and puts her hand in the steam from the thermos of tea the Hunter is holding. "Perfect. I win."

"I hate you," the Hunter informs her.

"Yes, I know." She pours some into a paper cup and takes a sip, smiling smugly. "So, Doctor. Other than her name and her species, are you going to offer us information on this girl and why you decided to bring her to the company picnic?"

"Well, she's got the most fascinating story . . . pickle, Rose?"

"Yes, thanks."

"According to her, she's from an alternate universe, in which she and my alter ego were intimate friends. Had a Tardis key and everything. I found her standing in the control room, bold as brass, turning on the monitoring array. Just about gave me heart attacks."

"Does she ever stop smiling?" asks the Dancer, her mouth now full of sandwich.

Everyone looks at Rose to see if she will stop, which she is unable to do. She is, however, able to hide her smiling face behind her hands.

"Not often," says the Doctor. "I've only known her for a couple of hours, though. Maybe she gets more moody in the afternoon."

Rose shakes her head. "No, I just . . . the Doctor's my best mate, you see, and I've been missing him so horribly for so many awful, awful months . . . and he was all alone in my world, there wasn't one single other Time Lord in the whole universe. And just look at you all! You're all eating _sandwiches_, for pete's sake!"

The Time Lords glance at one another, as though trying to see what's so extraordinary about the fact that they're eating sandwiches. There are now thirteen of them.

"He would be so glad to see all of you," Rose finishes lamely. "_I'm_ so glad to see all of you. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"Better than the quadruple moonrise of Albenath?" asks the Doctor.

"Oh, have you seen that?" asks Rose. "I _loved_ that!"

Suddenly the picnic is in full swing. Stories go dancing through the air as the last remaining Time Lords sprawl on the grass, drinking tea and eating pickles. If Rose weren't so interested in comparing experiences with the Doctor, she would be fascinated by the conversations happening around her. There are comparisons of restaurants, games of chess without the boards, arguments about the dates of long-forgotten alien wars, jokes gleaned from mysterious corners of the universe. But all Rose cares about right now is the Doctor, _her_ Doctor, grinning at her as they chatter about old times almost as though they shared them.

He actually rolls around with laughter when she tries to explain how it sounds when a Dalek and a Cyberman try to have a conversation. And Rose laughs too, not because the memory is funny but just because it's so blissful to see him laugh. When the two of them laugh themselves out, they hear the Visionary start to sing. The Ambassador and another Time Lord, whose name Rose didn't catch, join in with her. There are no words to the song, but it rings as though they are singing in a cathedral instead of a park. The air seems to dance with it, as it does above a road on a hot summer day, and Rose feels the sound of it run tingling through her blood.

"What is that?" she whispers, not wanting to break the spell of it but not wanting to deny her reawoken curiosity either.

"You don't know it?" the Doctor asks, surprised.

Rose shakes her head.

It's the Song of the Stars. It's a folk tune, one of our oldest. We sing it all the time."

"One of yours? From your world?"

"From Gallifrey, yeah. Your Doctor never sang it?"

Rose shakes her head again. "He hardly ever talked about . . . _Gallifrey_. When he talked about the past, it was the Time War. And I could hardly ever get him to do even that."

The Doctor studies her face, as though he can see his other self in the reflection in her eyes. When he speaks, Rose is unsure whether he's speaking to her, to himself, or across the nothingness between universes to his faraway other.

"Who is he, then, your Doctor? What thoughts haunt him in the silence between the worlds? What music fills his soul if he has left the songs of his people behind with their ashes? Where does he draw his strength, if not from the ageless wisdom of his empire?"

Silence hangs between them, a strange silence that seems to harmonize with the Visionary's song.

"I don't know his thoughts," Rose murmurs at last. "He liked Elvis and Glen Miller, and he knew all the words to _The Highwayman_. And he was always strong because we needed him—me, and Mickey and my mum, and Captain Jack, and Harriet Jones, and the Face of Boe, and Sarah Jane, and Lynda-with-a-Y. We needed him to be strong, so he was. That's _who_ he was."

"He did not sing of the stars," says the Doctor, "because he sang of the Earth. And that is a song that I don't know."

The song fades out, and it sounds as though someone has turned the noise of the real world back on. Rose jumps a little as the birds take her by surprise. "Sorry . . . _what_ did you say?"

"I _meant_ to say 'your Doctor cared a lot about this planet'," says the Doctor apologetically, "but that's not quite what came out. It's the Song that does it. Makes everything music. Beautiful enough to break your heart, but it does make conversations take a turn for the bizarre."

"It did _that_," says Rose, laughing again.

"Oh, _there_ you are!" cries the Student (who Rose thinks has a very odd name, as he looks like one of the oldest there). Everyone looks up to see the two missing Time Lords of the remaining fifteen approaching across the lawn. "You're late on every single time scale I can perceive, and there are no more biscuits."

"We were entangled," says the taller of the two new arrivals. They both look to be about the same age, slightly older than the Doctor, and give the appearance of a matching set. The man is tall and slender, with hair so blonde it is almost white curling in near-perfect waves around his face. The woman is only slightly shorter, her pale hair cut so that it flips out around her head but curls in at her cheeks. She is wearing sunglasses, but as she approaches she removes them to reveal the most astonishing eyes Rose has ever seen: bright gold, and visibly glowing even in the midday light.

"I'll bet you were," says the Doctor, propping himself up on his elbows to have a good look at the newcomers. "Do your eyes deceive me, Watcher, or are you positively glowing?"

The Watcher smiles, and her eyes gleam even brighter.

The Hunter gives a great shout of laughter. "About time!"

"Has she absorbed a Time Vortex, or something?" Rose murmurs to the Doctor. She has a vague, dreamy idea that absorbing a Time Vortex causes one to glow. She, at least, had been seeing spots for days afterward.

The Doctor chuckles. "Not a Time Vortex, no. The peculiar color and wattage of my dear old friend's eyes are caused by the bit too much fun she has been having with her mate. Am I not correct?"

The Watcher shrugs and sits gracefully down on the grass. "You're the Doctor. You tell me."

All the other conversations fall silent as the Doctor takes out his screwdriver and directs its beam into her irises. "Yep," he mumbles as he studies the resulting green light. "My dear old friend the Watcher is well into her very first pregnancy."

"Well done," says the Visionary, a gentle smile on her face. "We are proud of both of you."

"You're pregnant?" Rose asks. "Really? That's fantastic!"

The Watcher turns her glowing eyes on Rose. "And what are you, Human? Are you friend or foe? Are you a Companion . . . or are you Torchwood?"

As Rose stares at her in surprise, the Doctor scoffs. "You're slipping. Of course she isn't." He casts a sidelong glance at Rose. "Are you?"

"No!" Rose protests. "Well, not really. Sort of."

"She has the ID in her pocket," says the Watcher.

"Just so I can get into the building!" Rose pulls her wallet from her pocket and tosses the card out of it. "How'd you know that, anyway?"

"Pregnancy increases our natural telepathy," says the Doctor.

"Really?" asks Rose. "To what Basic?"

"_Doctor!_" the Analyst snaps. "Shut. Up!"

"Torchwood's only dangerous if they have knowledge," says the Guide, "and there you sit, flapping your jaw like a guest lecturer!"

"In the past twenty minutes," says the Hunter, "she's learned our numbers, our names, our present incarnations, our songs, our stories, the symptoms of our pregnancies, how we take our tea . . . another few seconds and you'd probably have been training her in the use of your ridiculous screwdriver!"

"Any idiot can use a sonic screwdriver," Rose snaps.

"You did it already!" the Hunter cries.

"He didn't! And Time Lord or not, while I'm sitting here you'll talk to _me_ if you have a problem with me!"

The Dancer giggles.

"What've you got against Torchwood, anyway?" asks Rose, glaring defiantly at all the Time Lords now staring at her. "It's not like they're a threat to you or anything. They haven't a clue you exist, and they wouldn't know what to do with a clue if they had one. They just collect bits of space junk and poke at it with sticks. They're harmless."

"Harmless to us," says the Visionary. "We can simply leave if they cause us trouble. But your planet is at a very delicate moment in its development: advanced enough to encounter alien life but primitive enough to panic about it. Just like the Doctor to set up a rendezvous in such a ticking time-bomb of a place."

The Doctor shrugs. "The weather was nice."

The Visionary levels him a distinctly annoyed glare before continuing. "If Torchwood never finds anything useful, its credibility will vanish and it will fade away. Your early contacts with other species will be cultural and economic, not military—managed by civilians instead of the government. You'll explore politely, introduce yourselves, swap recipes, join trade unions, start offering university courses like 'Iatheen 101: Basic Conversation.' But if Torchwood retains power, they'll hide the knowledge of other species for as long as they can. All alien species will be the enemy until proven otherwise . . . and there will be no chance to prove otherwise, because fear and procedure and politics will dominate your ambassadors instead of curiosity and adventure. It's how all the great invading cultures started out. The Sontarians had their Torchwood, as did the Carrionites and the Sykorax. I am the Visionary, and I have seen them all."

Rose glances at the Doctor, waiting for him to say something. She's never known him to_not_ say something, especially when faced with such a speech. But he sits in respectful silence. Rose has to chew on a new thought: that there is someone in the universe that outranks the Doctor.

"Torchwood isn't dangerous to _us_," continues the Visionary, and Rose decides that it's probably a good idea to pay very strict attention. "It's dangerous to _you_, you and all the other beings that pass through this system every day. And all Torchwood needs to do to stay in power is to capture a real, showpiece alien . . . and here sit all the showpiece aliens you could wish, in Phoenix Park, eating sandwiches with a Torchwood representative."

"Well, it's not as though I'm going to turn you in," Rose protests.

"You'd lie to your employers?" asks the Guide.

"Yes, happily."

"You trust us so much?"

"Never met a Time Lord I didn't trust," says Rose, glancing sideways at the Doctor. He grins at her, and she grins back, her tongue caught in her teeth. "I was a Companion long before I worked for Torchwood. There's no competition. The Doctor tells me to jump off a cliff and I jump."

"You could have fun with this one," observes the Hunter.

"Okay, what'd I just say about talking like I'm not here?" asks Rose.

"You'll have to excuse the Hunter," says the Doctor. "He's an idiot."

"I can see that, yeah."

"To return to the issue at hand," says the Visionary. "Companion you may be, but I cannot trust the welfare of this entire region of space to a human girl the Doctor has known for less than four hours."

"Four hours being a relative thing," the Doctor mutters.

"Four hours being perfectly absolute, since you haven't gone anywhen since meeting her."

The Doctor mutters something incomprehensible and folds his arms, pouting. With that expression, he looks surprisingly like the Dancer; Rose wonders if they're related.

"How can we know that she is deserving of our trust?" asks the Visionary. Rose considers protesting her use of the third person, but decides that this time she should keep her mouth shut. "I haven't bothered with _trusting_ a member of another race in a very, very long time. Didn't we have a way of checking these things once?"

"The Watcher can do it," says the Dancer. She's been lounging on her side as she eats her sandwich, but now she swings her legs underneath her and sits up on her knees. "The Poet can help her. If Rose Tyler is telling the truth about who she is and where her loyalties lie, then we can trust her to death and beyond. If she is not . . ." she trails off and shrugs. "We'll have to abduct her or brainwash her or something. I dunno."

Rose grins. "No one's going to believe you're proper aliens if you're going to 'brainwash me or something. You dunno.'"

"We're not very good at removing knowledge," admits the Student. "It's not who we are. To remove a being's knowledge is to go against everything that we believe in. It's doable, it's just ethically uncomfortable."

"So don't," Rose suggests. "What's she gonna do then? The, um . . ." she points to the pregnant one, whose name has become jumbled up among all the other names-that-are-not-names.

"Watcher," offers the Doctor.

"With my increased telepathy, I can probably get a complete view of your mind," explains the Watcher. "I've got a better chance than the others, anyway. Especially if the Poet helps me. Our minds are a little connected since I conceived."

"It's a bit bizarre, actually," admits the Poet.

"You'll get used to it," the Visionary assures them.

"You can read minds?" Rose asks. "Human minds? My Doctor never did that."

"It's difficult," says the Student.

"And rude," says the Guide. "Emergencies only."

"And weird," offers the Dancer. "Who'd want to read the mind of some other species? Yuck."

"You want to mind your manners when we have company?" asks the Doctor, reaching over the picnic to swat her on the back of the head. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to, Rose. You say we can trust you, I believe you."

"No, s'okay," Rose insists. "I don't mind." She's not sure this is absolutely true, but compared with the prospect of losing her memories of this afternoon, she's willing to have any number of people look around her brain. "What do I have to do?"

"For the moment, just sit still and be calm," the Watcher instructs. She twists around so she is sitting facing Rose. The Poet, her mate, sits beside her and puts his hand on her shoulder.

"You'd better count in the key, too," offers the Doctor. "She's very attached to it, and it resonates to my Tardis's engine."

Rose fishes the key from her pocket and removes it and its fob from the main ring.

"Just hold it, please," says the Watcher. She raises her hands to either side of Rose's face and closes her eyes. Rose casts one nervous look towards the Doctor and is reassured to see that he's watching her like a hawk. She closes her eyes as well.

Colors begin to dance behind her eyes, as though she's pressing the heels of her hands into her eyelids. Through the swirls of color come pictures, half like memories and half like films. The Doctor, Mickey, Jack, baby Sarah, her parents, Adam, Gwyneth. The pulse of the TARDIS engine seems to swell inside her brain. And there is music. Wild, haunting music, a single mournful voice. Rose is not sure if it is the Song of the Stars or something she heard once in a dream, or if the two songs are one.

She hears a voice speaking. Two voices. Three voices, perfectly synchronized: her own, the Watcher's, and the Poet's.

"I am . . . I am that which I am. I create myself. I am Rose Tyler. I am the Companion of the Doctor. I am the Valiant Child Who Dies in Battle. I comfort the Lonely God. I follow in the wake of the Oncoming Storm. When his home was rocks and dust, at the end of the world, there was still Me. I was the Tardis, and the Tardis was me, two hearts beating together for one Time Lord. It killed me to save him. It killed me to leave him. _Bad Wolf. White Wall._ DOCTOR!"

"Stop it! That's enough!"

Only after the Doctor takes her chin in his hand and gives her a firm shake does Rose realize that she'd been speaking aloud. Her eyes snap open so abruptly that she jumps in surprise. She's staring into green eyes—not the glacial blue of her first Doctor, nor the warm, laughing brown of her second, but the same eyes nonetheless, lightly flecked with a peculiar shade of green-gold that she can only see if she looks very closely. Behind him is the sky. Apparently she has fallen over and is now lying on the grass.

"Rose?" The Doctor holds one open hand in front of her face. "How many fingers?"

Rose blinks a few times, suspecting this to be a trick question. "Are we counting the thumb as a finger?"

"Good answer," the Doctor decides. "Can you sit up?"

"Yeah." Rose props herself up onto her elbows. She feels a little disoriented, but not hurt, as though she's just stepped off a roller coaster. "What about the Watcher?"

"I'm all right." The Watcher, too, is slowly sitting up, assisted by the Poet and the Guide. "I severed the connection before anyone got hurt."

With a lurch of terror, Rose sees that the Watcher's eyes have settled to ordinary blue. Before she can say anything, the Watcher blinks and shudders. The yellow glow returns.

"Her mind contains echoes of something overwhelming," says the Poet, as the Watcher rests her head in the palms of her hands. "It's just a memory now, and not a very clear one, at that, but it was still enough to give us a jolt. She probably blew a few fuses in our Tardis, too. I understood very little of what I saw, but the force of it was unmistakable."

"What was that tune?" asks the Watcher. She raises her head and sings a few bars of the wordless, eerie music. "It's not the Stars. It's not any of our songs."

"Hang on," says the Doctor. "Sing it again."

The Watcher sings it. After a few notes, the Doctor joins in. "I know it," he announces. "A while back, a Chenolian got into my control room and smashed open one of my control panels. Laid it open clean to the Heart. And before I got the thing closed again, I heard that song. That's my Tardis's song."

"Does anyone know it but you?" asks the Visionary.

"No one. Except that Chenolian, I suppose, but he's not in much shape to sing right now."

"There's the proof you needed, I guess," says the Student. "If she weren't the Doctor's Companion, there's no way she could have had that tune in her mind."

"That's a bit of sideline trivia," corrects the Watcher. "The truth is in her names, just as it in all of ours. You all heard her declare them. Her heart beats for the Doctor. She's as loyal to him as his Tardis is."

"Pathetic," says the Hunter, grinning at the Doctor. "You've been mucking about with a human."

"Hey!" the Doctor protests. "_I _did absolutely nothing of the sort!"

"And neither did the other him; he never . . ." Rose trails off, unwilling to shout what's on the tip of her tongue. _He loved me and I loved him. It was special and perfect, and if you try and make out it was nothing better than _mucking about_ I will smack your stupid Time Lord head right off your shoulders. It was better than that. It was much more important._

The Watcher gives Rose a long, hard look, and Rose feels herself blush. Drat that increased telepathy thing.

"Discuss all the secrets you will," said the Watcher. "She'll never betray our confidence."

"Well, then," says the Visionary, with a sense of finality. "We've got to discuss the Companionships. The Watcher and the Poet, obviously, will remain together. Doctor?"

The Doctor, who has been looking at Rose as though she is a puzzle or equation he's trying to solve, snaps back to attention. "What? Oh, yes. We discussed this, didn't we? I'm taking Susan for the next tour."

"Susan?" asks Rose. The human name hits her like a slap in the face.

The Dancer moans. "What will it take to get you to stop calling me that?"

"Old habits," says the Doctor, grinning without the slightest hint of apology.

"Fine. Then you're 'Grandfather' for the duration of the trip."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Wouldn't I?"

"Wait, wait, wait!" Rose cries. "Back up. What?"

"Grandfather," the Dancer repeats, surprised at Rose's confusion. "That's why he calls me 'Susan' all the time. He started it when I was little, before I'd chosen a name for myself. He always was ridiculous about Earth names; he thinks they're funny. Anyway, my mother liked it, so it stuck. I hate it."

"He's your grandfather?"

"'Course."

"The Doctor was the only one who thought quick enough to get anyone else out," says the Guide. "When the blast came, there were only seconds. Most of us were too shocked to move. But the Doctor took his Tardis straight down into the inferno without so much as a blink. Always was a lunatic. It cost both of them a regeneration" ("Good thing, too, 'cause my hair was all singed off," muttered the Dancer) "and his Tardis had to ride around inside the Analyst's for ages while they cleaned up all the damage. But he got the Dancer out."

"And no end of trouble has she given us since that day," adds the Doctor.

The Dancer sticks her tongue out at him, smiling. He reciprocates. Then both laugh, in just the same way, delighting in their childishness while the other Time Lords watch with looks of long-tried patience. Rose is amazed that she hadn't guessed immediately that they are family.

She wonders if there was once a Susan in her own reality. He'd made passing mention of family, of children, lost to the War, but he'd never told a single story or mentioned a solitary name. Rose hopes there was, just so she can envision the look on her Doctor's face if he could see his Susan now. She feels not the slightest twinge of jealousy—only joy, half giddy and half verging on tears, to see him surrounded by his own family, his own people.

_Oh, Doctor . . . if you could only see them. _

"If you two could quiet down . . ." requests the Visionary with a raised eyebrow.

With a great show of clearing throats, forcing smiles into solemn frowns, and straightening of clothes and hair, the Doctor and the Dancer calm themselves. "We do have much more to arrange."

"Actually, if you're done with me, I might go stretch my legs a bit," says the Doctor. "Take a turn about the park. Rose and I have a lot to catch up on."

He catches her eye and sends her a smile, which she can't help but return.

The Dancer catches his sleeve. "But you'll come back for me, right?"

Rose sees the trepidation in her eyes, and understands. She's known that fear herself.

"I'll be back soon," the Doctor tells her, squeezing her hand. "Just a few minutes."

"Units," Susan corrects.

"Oh, come on—"

"_Units_, Doctor, please," Susan begs. "Please don't go anywhere without me."

He sighs and gives in. "All right, then. I promise." He takes his Tardis key from his pocket and presses it into her hand. "There you are."

The Dancer, satisfied, releases her hold on his sleeve. The Doctor turns to Rose, takes her hands, lifts her gently to her feet, and leads her away from the picnic.

"How's your head?" he asks as the sound of the Visionary's voice dies away. "Any better?"

"Much. Thanks. What's a unit?"

The Doctor smiles a rather sad smile. "I guess it would make sense for him to not teach you that. A unit's a Time Lord's measure of time, our own timelines. How much we experience, how much we age. We can dance around your time all we like, but our units are still ticking past. For you, Gallifrey never existed anywhere in the universe, but for us it was destroyed four hundred thirty-six thousand five hundred and eighty units ago. So there's a big difference between me coming back in a few minutes and coming back in a few units."

"So why would it make sense for him to not teach me that?"

"Because you're human. You can't feel units of time. You need clocks and stars to tell you how old you are. There's no use using units unless you need to coordinate with somebody else who also uses them, and you can't use them unless you're a Time Lord. They're too relative, and too absolute, to use unless you can feel them. Is it my turn to ask a question?"

Rose smiles a bittersweet smile. Even as she basks in his attention, she knows she's hearing words that her Doctor would never have spoken. He'd always known more about her than she'd known about herself. There had been no questions for him to ask. "Sure, go for it."

"What are Bad Wolf and White Wall?"

Rose rolls her eyes, knowing that these are not questions to improve his opinion of her ability to articulate herself. "To tell you the truth, I still haven't a clue what Bad Wolf is," she admits. "I think the Doctor did, though. The words turned up everywhere when we first traveled together—in bits of conversation, in graffiti, in names of television channels and helicopters. Then when he left me behind – threw me and the Tardis out of harm's way, the idiot—I still saw it everywhere. And it occurred to me that maybe 'Bad Wolf' was a message, something to tell me that I couldn't give up, because there was more to understand. So I opened up the Heart of the Tardis, and . . ." she trailed off and shrugged. "And I have no idea what happened after that. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the control room floor with that song in my head and spots in my eyes, and the Doctor was trying to explain regeneration to me _while_ he was regenerating. I always meant to ask what the Bad Wolf had been, but I never really thought about it after that. Hadn't the time, I suppose. But it didn't seem as important anymore."

"And White Wall?"

"Oh, that one's easy. That's the white wall in the Torchwood complex, where the breach between the universes was the strongest. That's where . . ." Rose feels her voice catch as it hasn't caught in a very long time; the words don't want to come out. "That's where I lost him."

The Doctor continues to walk in silence, his arms slung behind his back, giving her a few moments of relative privacy to compose herself. It doesn't take long; Rose has long since wrung her grief dry.

"I'm curious about something," he says at length. "And if it's none of my business, you can go ahead and tell me so."

Rose takes one more breath, smoothing away the half-hiccoughs that are threatening to shatter her composure. "Sure, go for it."

"Did he love you?"

Rose is startled into silence, fueled partly by indignation, partly by memories, partly by doubt. "What?"

"If you don't want to discuss it, just say so," the Doctor repeats hurriedly. "I only want to know because it says something about _me_, doesn't it? I've never loved a human. Never really had a conversation with one that lasted more than fifteen minutes and didn't involve psychic paper. If I'm capable of loving one, I'd like to learn the fact sooner rather than later so I can take precautions."

"Don't blame you," answers Rose. Something inside her shudders at this strange, suddenly unknown person, calmly pondering the inconveniences of loving her. "Fat lot of good it ever did him."

"So he did love you, then?"

Rose shrugs, nestling herself into the warm safety of her jacket. "Never said it in so many words," she admits. "Never a slip of the tongue; never a kiss. Not even when he sneaked a signal through the last crack in the universe to tell me good-bye."

"So you never knew for certain."

"No, I knew." Rose raises her eyes to meet his, and she feels a warm rush of conviction. "I _knew_. He never had the chance to say 'I love you' . . . but he said 'Rose Tyler,' and that was enough."

She swallows, startled at the force of her own assurance, but a warm, wonderful memory of the Doctor's grinning face assures her that she's right. The Doctor with whom she's walking surveys her with a new gaze of curiosity and respect.

Rose snaps back to the present with a little shudder. "So . . . yeah. If you don't want to fall in love with something with a hundred-year lifespan, you'd better steer clear of Earth for a while."

"Yes," the Doctor agrees. "I'd better do that."

There's the faintest shadow of a smile pulling at his mouth, so subtle that Rose wonders whether he's even noticed it. It seems like the sort of smile that slips through unbidden when one isn't paying attention. Rose doesn't smile back; she's afraid she may frighten it away.

Their walk of a few minutes extends long into the afternoon. Sometimes they are serious; sometimes they are ridiculous; sometimes they traverse long stretches of the grass in thoughtful silence. Even though she is human, Rose can feel the precious time slipping away, sliding through her fingers or blowing through her hair, leaving a faint residue of pale memories in its wake. She knows, in some deep secret place inside herself, that this afternoon is all she will have. He'll fly away at the end of it, back to his own people, back where he belongs. And Rose will continue on, alone, a strange and foreign thing in a hostile universe that doesn't quite know what to do with her.

For the first time, she truly understands what it is to be the Doctor.

The light turns soft and golden as the sun sags down toward the western horizon. Rose feels as though she has lived a long, long time. The inevitable twilight of her life seems to be enshrouding her, sad but soft. And still they walk in step, Rose and the Doctor, across the shadow-streaked lawns of Phoenix Park at dusk.

They can see the picnic now, all tidied up. The Time Lords have all donned jackets; The Poet and the Watcher are wrapped up in the picnic blanket.

"They're waiting for me," the Doctor tells her. "Probably to give me another lecture on not compromising the dignity of the ancient and sovereign empire of the Time Lords."

"Which you'll ignore," Rose guesses.

"Probably, yeah."

He stands in silence for a long minute. He's got his hands slung together behind his back. Rose recognizes the mood, though the mannerism is new. Her first Doctor would have had his arms folded, and her second would have had his hands in his trouser pockets. It means he's thinking very hard about something. Rose stands quietly and lets him think, knowing that sooner or later he'll spit out whatever's on his mind, if he considers it within the capacity of her feeble human brain.

"What are you going to do with yourself, then, Rose Tyler, Companion of the Doctor?" He doesn't look at her as he asks it.

Rose shrugs. "Go back to my hotel, I guess. Fly to Heathrow in the morning. Think of a good story to tell Torchwood on the flight over."

"Ah." He taps the back of one hand in the palm of the other. "Well, you know . . ."

Rose knows this tone perfectly. She waits.

"You've already got a key, I mean. And there's plenty of room in the Tardis. Come to that, there's probably already a room in the Tardis with your name on it. And if you haven't anything else to do . . . well, you'd be welcome to come along with Susan and me, wherever we're going."

The Invitation. Rose has heard it twice already in her life. She knows she will never hear it again, no matter how she answers now.

She thinks of her own room in the Tardis, of her own wonderful lumpy bed that smells of old fur coats, motor oil, and static electricity. She thinks of how waking up every morning was as exciting as Christmas, of how falling asleep every night was satisfying as rest after a good day's work. She thinks of the wrenching, choking homesickness she feels on clear nights—homesickness for the stars.

Then she thinks of how the Doctor looked when he offered the Invitation to her, hiding hope and trepidation under a veneer of nonchalance. That is not how this Doctor asks. He's curious, interested in her, eager to see what she'll do out there at the farthest reaches of the universe. But there is no dread in his voice that she might say no. This Doctor has nothing to fear in the lonely silence of the Time Vortex. This Doctor is surrounded by the comforting awareness of his own people, alive, happy and thriving. He does not need her the way her Doctor did.

Whether she still needs him as once she did remains to be seen.

"There's nothing in the world I'd rather do," she admits, "than get inside that Tardis and fly away. There's nothing I want more."

"But," says the Doctor, a sad and knowing half-smile on his face.

"But," Rose agrees. "I promised I'd marry Mickey." This is not the reason.

The Doctor nods. "That is a problem." He knows that the problem has nothing to do with Mickey.

There is no suggestion that she just come for a while, return just after she left and pretend she never went at all. Rose has tried that. It doesn't work. Like it or not, it's time for her to go home.

"You know what you could do, though?" Rose asks. "If you wouldn't mind."

"What's that?"

"Before you and Susan take off . . . would you just mind nipping ahead about seventeen or eighteen years and seeing if my little sister Sarah wants to go? I've had my chance to sail the stars. I'd like her to have hers."

The Doctor smiles. "Sure. Be happy to."

"Great." Rose reaches into the pocket of his patchwork jacket and pulls out the pad of psychic paper. "Here's the address and the year. Mind you don't get lost, or mixed up, or anything. I'll . . ." She pauses for a moment to be sure her voice won't break. "I'll just go 'round the long way and meet you there, okay?"

"Okay."

And then, because he sees that she needs it, the Doctor pulls her into a hug and holds her fast for a few long moments.

When they break off, both are smiling the forced smiles people smile when they need to comfort someone else.

"Susan!" calls the Doctor. "Are you ready to go?"

The Dancer jumps up, brushing bits of grass off her skirt. "Not half. It's getting cold out here."

"Yeah," Rose agrees. "I've got to be going, too. But it was a pleasure to meet you, all of you. Good luck with the baby," she adds to the Watcher and the Poet.

"Thank you, Rose Tyler," says the Watcher. "I wish you the best in your endeavors, as well."

"Thanks. Well, if you're ever in need of a Torchwood Liaison or something, or just need to be taken out to lunch, give me a ring, all right? G'night, then."

"Good night, Rose," says the Doctor. "I'll see you in a few minutes."

Rose smiles, though oh, how it hurts. "A few minutes," she agrees.

There is one last shake of the hand, one last meeting of the eyes, and at last Rose Tyler turns her back to the Doctor and walks steadily away.

Tears waver in her eyes, then pour in shining silver drops down her cheeks and onto the grass below. They make it hard to see where she's going, and she's glad that they stop flowing before she reaches the busy street outside the gates of Phoenix Park.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4: The Companion

Chapter 4

The Companion

* * *

"Rose! Pssst! Rose!"

Rose blinks herself awake, looking around her darkened bedroom to see who's speaking to her. Mickey, lying beside her, is totally unconscious, though this hasn't stopped him from winding the blankets 'round himself like mummy wrappings. The nights are beginning to be chilly in Cardiff.

Something knocks against the window, making a small, dull _tink_ against the glass. Rose sits up, shoves her feet into her slippers, and snags her warm flannel robe off the bedpost. Then she goes to the window and shoves it open.

Her little sister Sarah is standing in the street, her hand poised to throw more pebbles. Behind her, parked half on the sidewalk, is a van covered in advertisements for a heating and cooling repair service. Leaning against this van are the Doctor and the Dancer.

"Rose!" Sarah calls as soon as Rose's head and shoulders are fully out the window. "Rose, look! He's come!"

"Keep your voice down!" Rose orders. "You'll wake up the boys if you keep carrying on like that. I'll be right down. Wait a minute."

She eases the window shut, then goes to her closet and removes an old shopping bag. With it held tightly to her chest to keep it from rustling, she sneaks downstairs. She hears no noise from any of the boys' rooms, except for Peter, muttering in his sleep as usual.

She takes her keys from their peg by the door, draws back the bolt, and steps out into the chilly night air.

Sarah is bouncing up and down, partly from cold and partly from excitement. She has dark brown hair, like Rose's and Jackie's, though unlike them she's chosen to keep it that way. No one knows quite where the touch of curl in it comes from. Her eyes are aglow with happiness.

"He says we're in a hurry," Sarah tells Rose as Rose quietly shuts the door behind her, "but you told me I _had_ to come and see you before I left, so—"

"You were absolutely right," Rose tells her. "And don't let him give you that 'being-in-a-hurry' nonsense. He's having you on." She sets the shopping bag down on the ground and pulls from it a lidded shoebox. "I've got some things here that you're going to need."

She offers the box. Sarah pulls off the lid to find a new pair of Converse trainers, still in their tissue paper. "Don't go anywhere without comfortable shoes on," Rose instructs. "Don't even get out of bed without them, okay?"

"Okay."

"And here." Rose next produces her old mobile phone. "This used to be mine. It'll connect, no matter who you're calling, wherever you are. Never needs to charge up, either. So let us know how you're doing once in a while."

"I will."

The next is a CD: The Best of Glen Miller. "Make sure he dances," says Rose. "It's good for him. If he doesn't know how, teach him. The CD drive's underneath the little puce-colored blinking light on the control console."

"Underneath the puce light," Sarah repeats. "Okay."

"And here." Rose twists the plain Yarrow key off its fob and presses it into Sarah's hand. "Keep it close."

Sarah tries to twist her hand away from the warm little slip of metal. "Rose, I can't take your key! You love this old thing!"

"And now it's your turn to use it. So keep it safe."

Sarah acquiesces. "I will. I promise."

Rose hugs her, and feels her little sister shivering with excitement and fear. "Tell everyone goodbye for me, 'kay?" Sarah requests.

"Sure. Bring me back something nice."

"I love you."

"I love you."

Sarah places her presents carefully in the shopping bag, picks it up, and walks across the street to where the Tardis waits for her.

The Doctor looks at Rose for one long minute, taking in the three-children heaviness of her body, the lines on her face, the silver in her hair. Rose smiles at his scrutiny, long past embarrassment, even when presented with his immaculate agelessness. He nods to her, a nod somehow reminiscent of a bow, and Rose smiles even wider.

"Well, then, Sarah Tyler," he says at last, looking down into the eager face of his newest Companion. "Ready to go?"

Sarah nods. "Ready."

"Let's get a move-on, then," encourages the Dancer. "'S warmer inside."

She pulls open the back door of the van, and she, then Sarah, then the Doctor all climb in.

Rose wraps her robe tighter around herself to ward off the chill, her staff-and-serpent key fob squeezed tightly in her hand. She doesn't want to go inside until she sees the Tardis safely off.

She hears the familiar throbbing howl of the engine, and the van's lights pulse bright and dim in rhythm with it. Cold wind comes swirling through the street, flinging her hair around her face. The Tardis is there, then translucent, then transparent, then gone.

Rose turns around and goes inside.

The kitchen phone chooses that moment to ring. The sound of it sends Rose's heart into overdrive, and she hurries to silence it before it can wake up Peter, John, Jamie or Mickey.

"Smith residence."

"Rose?" Sarah's voice is tinged with worry.

"Yes."

"Oh, good," says Sarah, and Rose hears her smile. "I was just checking. Bye! Love you!"

The line goes dead. Rose smiles as she turns off the phone, then quietly creeps back upstairs to fight the blankets away from Mickey.

* * *

Finis


End file.
